Moms: A Father Goose Offshoot
by litmouse
Summary: Sydney Bristow is spending a few days relaxing in Stars Hollow. What will she and Lorelai find to talk about? A Gilmore Girls Alias crossover


**A/N:** _Alias_ and _Gilmore Girls_ are the lost and abandoned children of, respectively, JJ Abrams and Amy Sherman-Palladino. I don't know who owns them now but **a**: they're not me and **b:** they should be shot.

**Moms: A Father Goose Offshoot**

**TIMELINE**

**Gilmore Girls**: _Gilmore Time_, Somewhere late in the fifth season, after ASP hit the big reset button. Luke/Lorelai back together. After Lorelai has started attending Friday Night Diners again but before Rory's meltdown. Not that it matters, really.

**Alias**: Completely AU after mid-third season, Sydney left the CIA after getting her memory back…. She and Irina have come to a reasonably amicable reconciliation, for details see _Loyalties. _

**Father Goose verse**: Six years after _Loyalties_, two years after _Schism_. The events of _Schism_ have, sadly, made little impact on the course of life in Stars Hollow

If you are not familiar with the Father Goose verse there's a couple minor lines that won't make sense, but otherwise not necessary to read those stories to follow this one.

However, fair warning, if you're not familiar with the basics of both shows this story won't make much sense…..

**Moms**

"I'm sorry, a what?" Lorelai said.

"A workout room? Exercise room? Weights? Treadmills?"

"I'm sorry I don't… one moment. _Michel_! Would you come here please."

"Yes," the elegant frenchman said coming out of the Dragonfly Inn's office, "what is it you need now?"

"This lady is asking about our exercise facilities."

"Ah. And you did not understand. Of course. Allow me," he paused just a second to make his assessment, her hand was under her folded coat so he couldn't check for a ring … so by age… the body slim and fit, but the tell-tale lines around the eyes, plus a certain bearing… not the sort of woman to be flattered by a misplaced 'mademoiselle' he decided, "Madame, as to exercise facilities I am afraid we have none. I have tried to explain this concept to the owners," he nodded slightly toward Lorelai, "but it is like trying to explain poetry to a cockatoo. We do have cross-country skiing and horse-back riding in season but as I'm sure you noticed we have no snow and I am afraid the horses are very fat and lazy. We offer comfortable beds, very quiet nights and food which, while calculated to induce heart disease at a very young age, even I must admit is well prepared."

"What about jogging paths?"

"In a sense, no. But in another sense, yes, as all the local roads are nearly bereft of traffic. The natives are primitive and may stare, but I assure you they are quite harmless."

The woman smiled. "Well I did tell them I wanted a quiet place to kick back a few days… my friends Buffy and Dawn, they recommended Stars Hollow," the woman added in response to Michel's raised eyebrow.

_Buffy. _Lorelai stiffened at the name and turned to look more closely at the woman who seemed to sense her tension and smiled at her.

"You must be Ms. Gilmore," she said. "They said to tell you, and I quote, 'She doesn't know and wouldn't care if she did,' unquote. I hope you know what that means, because I don't, but hey," she grinned, "I don't care. So, you should have a reservation for me, Bristow, Sydney."

"Of course," Michel said, "one moment." They took care of the paperwork, Michel handed over the key. "There you are, just up the stairs and to your right. We begin serving dinner at six."

"Thank you Michel. Just one more thing. Can you give me directions to place called 'Luke's?' My friends said I should eat there at least once…"

"You're quite sure these people are your friends?" Michel asked.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The traffic in the square seemed unusually busy the next morning, until Lorelai noticed that several of the cars seemed to circling. There was Tom the construction guy and Andrew from the bookstore, both of the Petes….

Lorelai hurried on into the diner where she noticed that many of the customers seem to be fixated on something outside, even Luke seemed to be drawn to …. Lorelai turned and looked. It was her, the new guest at the Dragonfly. She was in the Gazebo in the square, using the railing as an exercise bar as she stretched, reaching down down down to grasp her upraised foot with both hands and spend a minute or so bouncing gently, then pulling up up up, arching her back and raising her hands to the sky and bouncing again, eyes closed, her head bopping to a rhythm presumably provided by an ipod or somesuch. She was wearing form-fitting blue sweats and matching tank-top that rose to give a little flash of muscled abs with each bounce.

"Oh, Luke," Lorelai said sweetly. Then when that didn't work she whistled and smiled to see him jerk guiltily and almost lunge for the pot to fill her coffee cup.

He retrieved a couple orders from the kitchen window and served them, toasted a danish for her and they chatted about Taylor's latest atrocity, she gave him the Rory update… and noticed his attention shifting again and she turned and looked…

Now the damn woman had pulled a cloth from a slingback pack and was toweling herself off…all she needed was a little chicka-boom music and …. and now she was striding like a big cat across the street straight toward the diner….

"Ahem," Lorelai cleared her throat and Luke jumped again, but it wasn't so funny this time.

She came bounding into the diner, saw Lorelai sitting there and gave her a big smile and a friendly "Hi," then looked to Luke, "Restroom?" and he pointed and she disappeared only to come back a few minutes later, hair neatly slicked back, face gleaming, wearing a clean tank top. She took the seat one down from Lorelai at the counter.

"Well," she said opening the menu Luke handed her, "Ms. Gilmore…."

"Lorelai, please."

"What's good here?"

"Oh, everything really. Except the service. The service seems very … distracted lately."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Later Lorelai called her daughter.

"I think I've done a terrible thing," she said.

"You wore your rhinestone penis shirt to the Methodist bake sale again didn't you?" Rory said.

"No, that's not til next week."

"Oh, right. So what'd you do?"

She told her about the woman at Luke's….

"She was flirting with Luke? Did you joust the bitch? … Smack her around a little? Kick her shin, pull her hair?"

"No-ooo, somehow I don't think that would have worked out very well. And she wasn't _flirting_ really, she was just sitting there all tan and healthy and eating the blueberry pancakes with the whipped cream…"

"I see."

"… and asking Luke about good places to go hiking and Luke was being _helpful…_"

"Well, he would. But come on, it's Luke, he would never…"

"I know, I know. It's just when I'm there he's supposed to…. You know, forget to top up _other people's _coffee. And then her earring rang…"

"Her what?"

"Her earring. Cute little butterfly thing. Turns out it's her cellphone. Apparently she has this friend who's some kind of electronics wiz. So, it's her mother calling and she wants her to come down and spend the weekend at her Caribbean beach house…

"Nice."

"Yeah. And she's saying no, she's just finished this job in New York and she just wants a few days to herself before she's off to another job in Denver and then one in San Francisco then maybe….

"Wait a minute, she's just sitting talking on her phone? What about the no cell phone rule…"

"Exactly. I practically had to go around the counter and get the sign and wave it in her face…"

"When you say _practically…._"

"Well, I didn't actually wave it in _her_ face… "

"Kind of … pathetic, but I really don't how that's terrible…."

"Oh, that's not the terrible thing. No, she told her mother she'd call her back and apologized very sweetly and said something about how while she and her mother had reconciled and it was nice, it still didn't mean that a weekend at her house was _relaxing…"_

"Ah," Rory said, "finally, your chance to shine."

"Well," Lorelai whined, "there she was with her healthy tanned glow and her fabulous jet-setting career making me feel all provincial and small. I may have said something that implied that when it came to tension inducing mothers she didn't know the half of it. I may even have said something about having the worst mother in the western hemisphere."

"Family pride is beautiful thing," Rory said. "So did she crawl meekly away in defeat or…"

"Oh, she said something polite… but she had this sort of.. smug look, like she just knew there was no way my mother could be worse than hers, but she was going let me have my delusions of grandeur."

"Ohhh, maddening," Rory said.

"Exactly. So I borrowed fifty dollars from Luke and I slammed it on the counter and bet her fifty bucks that my mother was worse than hers. She said she didn't want to take my money. I said she wouldn't. And then…. " she paused.

"You didn't…" Rory said.

"I did," Lorelai admitted. "I did the cluck-cluck sounds."

"And then…"

"Well, I had her then. I could tell, she wasn't the type to back a way from a cluck-cluck challenge."

"So?"

"So she said her mother had faked her own death and abandoned her when she was six. I laughed. She said it was almost thirty years before she saw her mother again and when she did, her mother shot her. "

_"What?" _

"That's what she said, all complacent, like that meant she won or something. I laughed. So she pulled one of the tank top straps aside and showed us the little white pucker of the scar. I told her I believed her, it just didn't matter, I still won. Then she had some story about her mother having murdered her boyfriend's father, and another one about blackmailing her with evidence that would save her best friends life and hitting her over the head with a hockey stick and, of course I just laughed. And then I did the terrible thing…"

"You didn't…"

"I invited her to join us for Friday night dinner."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The trembling maid closed to door behind them and they got into the jeep. They sat silent for a moment then Sydney opened her purse, reached in and withdrew a hundred dollar bill and handed it to Lorelai.

"The bet was just fifty," Lorelai said.

"Yes," Sydney said. "I know. Would you excuse me a moment." She reached up and touched her earring, Lorelai could vaguely hear the beeping as the tiny phone dialed out.

"Hey, Mom," Sydney said, "I'm sorry, I know it's late, I just wanted to hear your voice…."

**-30-**


End file.
